by Ana Vasile, published on 5.07.2011

Pottermore is a new element of the Harry Potter universe. This saga spreads over 7 films and 8 books: a rich and magical narrative universe whose origins are rooted in J.K. Rowling’s novels. Her books sold 450 million copies. The second part of the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out on July 13^th.

Pottermore is a website promising a new online experience into the bookish universe of Harry Potter, placed under its author’s high patronage. Built as a social network, the site’s ambition is to unite Harry Potter’s global fan community, which until now, had been spread on hundreds of sites, official or created by fans.

In a press conference in London, J.K. Rowling declared that this site offers users new stories, never before included in the books or in any of her novels, sold for the first time in e-book format. The books have the ambition of being multimedia, with interactive illustrations and elements. In his analysis, Henry Jenkins wrote that this experiment could be the most visible transmedia project of our time.

Rowling said: “Pottermore is a magnificent experience where I have the possibility of being creative with media that didn’t exist in 1990.” Rumors say that the platform will become the main meeting point for fans by offering games, an official encyclopedia, readings by Stephen Fry and competitions. The speculations have a solid base: last year, Warner Bros studio registered the “Pottermore” brand specifying its content as such: online games, live chat, videos and literary program.

The speculations go even further and we dream of a transmedia project: with an MMO game, which would continue into the real world. The Times UK said that “this new website is a sophisticated online game unveiling clues that lead to prizes hidden in the real world. Magic wands will be found in the UK, in the US and potentially in other countries”.

Rowling already wrote more than 18.000 words for this online platform, that describe the characters, locations of the objects and her magic universe in detail.

A revolution in book editing

If, in the past, Rowling had refused to publish the Harry Potter saga as e-books by fear of pirating, Pottermore will become the exclusive distributor of Harry Potter digital books. Strangely, it’s the author that owns the right to these e-books and not the editors.

Why finally accept to enter the world of digital edition? The Pottermore producers hope that they will succeed in attracting a new generation of readers, who will discover the Harry Potter universe thanks to its digital incarnation.

The e-books will be compatible with most e-readers. Furthermore, they won’t be blocked by the programs that control the use of digital works (DRM). The e-books will, however, have a digital watermark with the buyer’s data.

Wired had named this way of publishing books the “Radiohead moment” of edition. Like Radiohead, Rowling is eliminating the intermediaries of the sale cycle by addressing their audiences directly through their own websites.

How to create the buzz?

The Pottermore experience is interesting from its launch. These past few weeks, the directors of the Pottermore.com site have set up an ingenious system to create the buzz around its online launch.

Taking advantage of a large fan base and of a community always active in a rich and extensible universe, the project was discovered through a game of clues. Rowling released clues on social networks, asking internet users to find the 10 letters of her new project. Theses letters matched 10 geographic locations from the Harry Potter universe. Once integrated into the site Secret Street View, they gave the name of her new site.

After this discovery, Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as a Youtube channel were created. A week after its creation, the Twitter account already has 122 072 followers, while the Facebook account has 20 510 fans.

Dozens of articles have been published on the subject in most major newspapers such as The Telegraph, The Guardian, Wired, The New York Times, The Times UK, The Independent…and on a multitude of blogs. Journalists and bloggers launched rumors and speculations on the content of Rowling’s new project.

Conclusion

The fabulous launch of Pottermore and all the buzz around it are directly linked to the content of the Harry Potter universe, the most powerful reading brand in the world. Few other brands could have managed to create so much interest around a website.

Once Rowling unveiled the principles of this experience, most journalists concentrated on the sale of ebooks. Simon Pulman highlighted that in his point of view, the most important element is the unification of a huge community around a website in direct interaction with the author of the universe.

At this point, it’s difficult to declare that the Pottermore experience is the element that we missed in the Harry Potter transmedia system, but it’s certainly a transmedia interaction element that we will talk about again in the next few months.